Dan Solove lists Andrew Delbanco's fine new book called Melville: His World and Work. One of the book's merits is its even-handed treatment of scholarship about Melville's works. Unfortunately, in assessing the Law-Lit debate about Billy Budd, Sailor, the author seems to this reader to privilege more traditional accounts of the tale (i.e. those justifying Captain Vere's behavior). Part of this relates to Delbanco's interpretive technique itself, e.g., p. 311: "As if some mischievous philosopher has dropped by to divert us with an epistemological riddle. Melville opens the debate over Billy's fate with a pair of rhetorical questions: 'Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other?'" In this formulation, the most important textual riddle, articulated several lines below, is omitted: "Whether Captain Vere, as the surgeon professionally and privately surmised, was really the sudden victim of any degree of aberration, every one must decide for himself by such light as this narrative may afford". Only the most authoritarian reader -- Richard Posner being among the most recent -- can avoid this inquiry or suggest, more benignly (as Prof. Delbanco does) that the story excuses Vere by making all decisions seem fraught with ambiguity. The insertion of the surgeon's doubts about Vere late in the genealogy of Melville's tale (see, e.g., The Failure of the Word, pages 145 et seq) helps shed the narrative "light" upon Vere's lawless obsession with Billy's death.
Prof. Delbanco does little with the surgeon, who privately surmised with other officers that custom and usage dictated not a drumhead court but a return to the fleet before Billy should have been tried, much less executed. Vere insists that the law requires him to hang Billy. He is wrong, and his fellow officers know this but lack the courage publicly to challenge their leader. Only the judges hand-picked by Vere courageously voice their doubts. Here, too, Prof. Delbanco's reading tilts towards Vere, as he speaks of "the judges . . . groping for some reason to defer judgment". The reasons were palpable to everyone!
The new book's account of the debate among Posner, Brook Thomas and myself will have to be judged more impartially by other readers. However, there is a troubling factual omission. on p. 384, where Prof. Delbanco reports (correctly) that Hayford and Sealts (the textual editors) ORIGINALLY argued that Melville simply did not know enough about the relevant naval law to "intend to imply that Vere was conducting an illegitimate judicial action" (emphasis provided). But later, as should be fairly well known, Sealts -- partly citing to my work --reversed his position:
"With regard to Vere's conduct of Billy's trial and execution, Hayford and Sealts [in their 1962 edition] concluded -- perhaps somewhat hastily --that Melville 'simply had not familiarized himself with statutes of the period.' 'Melville's expertise in naval law and history' must be assumed according to Richard H. Weisberg, a man trained both in literature and jurisprudence. . . [However,] Melville is inviting his reader to examine Vere's actions in the context of the story as he himself conceived it, not with strict reference to naval law and history." Merton M. Sealts, "Innocence and Infamy in Billy Budd Sailor," in John Bryant, ed., A Companion to
Melville Studies (N.Y.: Greenwood Press, 1986), 416-419, emphases in original.
The narrator explicitly asks us to judge Vere's sanity in summoning the drumhead court, in ignoring Naval usage and the covert rumblings of his fellow officers, in parrying the nervous court's own hesitation, in hanging a man beloved of the crew by suggesting they will mutiny if Billy is not hanged, in mustering the men back to work quickly after the disgraceful execution precisely to avoid that mutiny, and in violating law and custom at every turn while rigidly declaring himself bound by law and not his own natural conscience. Melville wanted this story, of course, to be for everyone, but it is now established that he knew enough of the law of the sea to be intentionally adding to the narrative "rainbow" Vere's hypocritical legal pronouncements.
Prof. Delbanco's new book, despite these qualms, must be read by all Melville enthusiasts.
Prof. Delbanco does little with the surgeon, who privately surmised with other officers that custom and usage dictated not a drumhead court but a return to the fleet before Billy should have been tried, much less executed. Vere insists that the law requires him to hang Billy. He is wrong, and his fellow officers know this but lack the courage publicly to challenge their leader. Only the judges hand-picked by Vere courageously voice their doubts. Here, too, Prof. Delbanco's reading tilts towards Vere, as he speaks of "the judges . . . groping for some reason to defer judgment". The reasons were palpable to everyone!
The new book's account of the debate among Posner, Brook Thomas and myself will have to be judged more impartially by other readers. However, there is a troubling factual omission. on p. 384, where Prof. Delbanco reports (correctly) that Hayford and Sealts (the textual editors) ORIGINALLY argued that Melville simply did not know enough about the relevant naval law to "intend to imply that Vere was conducting an illegitimate judicial action" (emphasis provided). But later, as should be fairly well known, Sealts -- partly citing to my work --reversed his position:
"With regard to Vere's conduct of Billy's trial and execution, Hayford and Sealts [in their 1962 edition] concluded -- perhaps somewhat hastily --that Melville 'simply had not familiarized himself with statutes of the period.' 'Melville's expertise in naval law and history' must be assumed according to Richard H. Weisberg, a man trained both in literature and jurisprudence. . . [However,] Melville is inviting his reader to examine Vere's actions in the context of the story as he himself conceived it, not with strict reference to naval law and history." Merton M. Sealts, "Innocence and Infamy in Billy Budd Sailor," in John Bryant, ed., A Companion to
Melville Studies (N.Y.: Greenwood Press, 1986), 416-419, emphases in original.
The narrator explicitly asks us to judge Vere's sanity in summoning the drumhead court, in ignoring Naval usage and the covert rumblings of his fellow officers, in parrying the nervous court's own hesitation, in hanging a man beloved of the crew by suggesting they will mutiny if Billy is not hanged, in mustering the men back to work quickly after the disgraceful execution precisely to avoid that mutiny, and in violating law and custom at every turn while rigidly declaring himself bound by law and not his own natural conscience. Melville wanted this story, of course, to be for everyone, but it is now established that he knew enough of the law of the sea to be intentionally adding to the narrative "rainbow" Vere's hypocritical legal pronouncements.
Prof. Delbanco's new book, despite these qualms, must be read by all Melville enthusiasts.
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